The vampire is a unique and interesting breed of monster. It has
historically been a very successful monster because it plays on some of
our worst fears. Among these are temptation by the devil (as he is
represented by the character of the vampire) and the question of what
becomes of the body and soul upon death. The first fear pertains
primarily to Christians, but I suppose non-religious types can also
sympathize with the general fear of being tempted into any kind of
danger. The second fear is perhaps deeper and more frightening because
it is not necessarily one of morality, but actual physical laws. When we
die, we accept the fact that our bodily functions cease and never again
will return. Those who believe in a soul also believe in a specific
destination for that soul. But then there is always that worry about
what happens if something goes wrong. That is where the vampire comes
in.

Of the six movies viewed, four contained definite religious undertones
(and the other two are debatable). For example, in the Vampire Hunter
D movies, Christ and Christianity are never mentioned, but still
there is a cruciform object in nearly every scene. The sword that D uses
to kill his vampire prey is shaped like a nearly proportionate cross and
there are many cross shaped windows and steeples in the background. So
while D appears to just use brute strength and cunning to defeat the
vampires, we the audience actually get the feeling that his strength must
come from a higher power. Bram Stoker's Dracula makes more
obvious use of Christ and religious objects, with the characters actually
using crosses and wafers to fend off the vampires. They try garlic and
traditional cures at first, perhaps representing a willingness to stick
to modern man's devices, but when those fail they must inevitably turn
back to the church. The movie with the greatest religious presence was
certainly John Carpenter's Vampires. Here we had a team of men
(with their trusty priest companion) clearing out vampire nests, but soon
most of the team is killed leaving the leader James Crow (who, not so
coincidentally, shares initials with Jesus Christ) to finish off the
vampire Valek. Another interesting detail is that the team stays at the
Sun-God Motel. These two elements have historically been the only two
effective against vampires and here they are linked (and logically too
because who created the sun after all?) It is also no surprise to find
that Valek (like Dracula) was created because he turned his back on God.
Clearly here, then, we see the message to cling to the church at all
times.

Even more basic to all of the movies, though, is the game that they play
with the notion of death. In real life when someone gets viciously
attacked by a wild animal or beast, we expect them to bleed a lot and
die. We will mourn their loss, but come to terms with it and eventually
move on. This process gets complicated, though, in vampire movies. The
biggest problem is that the attack does not kill the victim, nor does it
allow them a normal recovery. The victim is left in a strange in-between
state where they are neither alive nor dead, but simply "undead." This
notion is similar to that of ghosts (souls who continue to haunt the
earth from the grave) only it is more threatening because the vampires
are not just passive wanderers, but active seekers of victims. When a
friend or relative gets bitten, the survivors cannot accept the loss
because they are unsure of the person's fate. The horror of the vampire
story is the fact that the sacred security of the grave is taken away.

The Blade movies make good use of this death game as a means of
connecting the first movie to the sequel. In the end of the first,
Whistler supposedly shoots himself and yet somehow we find him sustained
by a pool of blood in the second. Also in Bram Stoker's Dracula
we find that mere death is never the end. Lucy's final hours are filled
with grief and then when she finally passes away she is not even granted
peace. Once again there is this notion that there is something beyond
the grave and so we must too venture into that unknown place.

In recent decades there has been an explosion of vampire movies and this
must be attributed to the fact that the recurring themes of vampire
stories are very relevant in our modern times. The vampire teaches us to
cling to the cross at a time when congregations are shrinking and more
and more people are falling away from the church. Advancing medical
knowledge now allows doctors to revive people who we would have
traditionally seen as dead. New technology like cryogenics also adds new
questions about how exactly we define death.